Kurtenbach: The Raptors loss was ugly, but panic about the Warriors at your own peril

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Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry (30) looks down as the Warriors lose to the Toronto Raptors during the third quarter of a NBA game at Oracle Arena in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2017. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)

OAKLAND — The Raptors kicked the Warriors’ butts on Wednesday. Toronto’s victory — without Kawhi Leonard in their lineup and going up against the Warriors’ four healthy All-Stars — was comprehensive and nearly wire-to-wire; they led by as many as 26 points and chased the Warriors’ stars from the contest midway through the fourth quarter (which was, honestly, a half-quarter too late).

Arguably the best team in the Eastern Conference ran the defending champions on their home floor. And noting that the Raptors swept the two-game season series from the Dubs this season, surely it’s going to be difficult for every level of the hot-take food chain to avoid running with this.

All credit to the Raptors — they’re an excellent team deserving of profuse praise — but for those who decide that even part of their reaction to Thursday’s loss is to panic about the state of Golden State — to question if this team is still the cream of the crop in the NBA — I have a quick message:

Do so at your own peril.

Because if you’re trying to find answers for June in December, you’re looking in the wrong place.
(Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)

Frankly, at this juncture in the Golden State dynasty, statements like that shouldn’t need to be made, but alas, here we are.

The Warriors lost Wednesday because they turned in a lackadaisical effort while the Raptors, playing without Leonard and for a head coach whose mother died this week, opted to make a statement with high-motor play from the opening tip.

It was a script that we’ve seen play out time and time again with the Warriors — a team that’s constantly playing the long-con and looking towards the late spring and early summer; one that often (too often, if you ask some fans) results in forgettable efforts in objectively forgettable regular-season games.

More often than is truly fair, the Warriors get away with efforts like Wednesday’s because some pride kicks in come the second half of the game.

Those third-quarter, game-changing runs the Warriors became famous for last season — the ones where the Warriors pushed the pace, became cohesive with their swarming defensive rotations, simply overwhelmed opponents with superfluous talent? Lazy first halves were a near-symbiotic precursor to those.

For years, the Warriors were good enough to play full-throttle for one quarter (or half of a quarter) and win NBA regular season games.

They still are. But in the nth year of this dynasty, it’s becoming harder for the Warriors to open ‘er up like that.

We saw it Wednesday, when the Warriors tried to make a third-quarter push, but things weren’t breaking their way. Shots weren’t falling and the Raptors — a worthy adversary, to be sure, declined to be intimidated — you could see Golden State’s players collectively decide “nah” at the start of the fourth quarter, when an unrelenting Raptors team opened up a 20-point lead.

Could Golden State have kept pushing, looking for that trademark cohesion and verve after three quarters of clunkiness? Could they have made it a game or even won? We’ve certainly seen this team do crazier stuff.

But why bother?

No, seriously, what’s the point?

The Warriors are going to make the playoffs and they’ll probably have home-court advantage throughout the Western Conference portion of it as well — all without mentally or physically exhausting themselves ahead of the real season, which starts in mid-April.

This team plays 100-plus games every year and the vast majority of them are perfunctory, and in those games, they always get an opponent who is looking to make a statement (most of the time on national TV), too.

The optics are bad, no doubt, but disillusionment is natural.
(Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group) (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)

The Dubs’ oh-well attitude was evident after the contest, where Steve Kerr and the players tried to find the right balance between unaffected and indifferent in their press conferences. How can you explain that you don’t care without coming across as flippant or arragant — without saying it outright.

This Warriors team doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone in the NBA or to themselves. They’re often going through the motions and that’s more than good enough.

Perhaps that will be the downfall of this team — we almost saw it happen last season, when the Rockets had two double-digit halftime leads in elimination games of the Western Conference Finals.

Yet the Warriors never seemed stressed. They had confidence that could have been confused with collective psychosis, but sure enough, they won both games and the de-facto NBA Finals. No harm, no foul.

It’s been said for centuries that hubris is the downfall of man, and there’s no doubt that while these Warriors remain supremely confident, this team is different than in year’s past. Perhaps the dynasty comes to an end this year at the hand of an Eastern Conference foe. (Sorry, but do you see a viable threat in the West?)

This Warriors team is top-heavy — they have fewer numbers to draw strength from — and against the top teams in the East, the Bucks, Raptors, and Celtics, which are all crazy deep, that could prove problematic come the NBA Finals. Golden State will struggle to tread water in bench vs. bench minutes.

But while the Raptors won the season series from the Warriors, Golden State gave Toronto everything it could handle north of the border with Leonard on the floor — Durant cooked him.

And the Bucks? After they turned in a sterling performance against the Warriors at Oracle Arena last month, the Warriors — full squad — went into the new building in Milwaukee and beat them by double-digits.

(We have to wait until late next month to see the Celtics — plenty of time for them to find a groove.)

Oh, and those teams won’t be playing five All-Stars in a brand of basketball that highlights stars. That’s an important distinction to make.

Alas, there are six months between now and that entirely different ballgame. So much can change between now and the start of the playoffs — ike the Warriors getting a healthy Demarcus Cousins.

And while there are no guarantees that the Warriors make it to a fifth-straight NBA Finals, you’d be a fool not to bet on them to do so.

This is still the best team in the NBA — they’re simply over showing it.